1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to Internet services. More particularly, it relates to a system and method for managing relationships between trading network managers, suppliers and customers.
2. Background Art
The Internet provides exchange mechanisms where suppliers bring goods and services to be offered and malls for shoppers to obtain them. These exchange mechanisms are largely independent with a single company selling and an individual from another company shopping. Generally, if companies wish to partner to gain advantage either from consolidating purchase volumes to obtain better prices or from creating a complete palette of business goods and services to establish a ‘one stop shop’, many individual relations are established and managed independently. Manual integration of systems to ensure members rights and responsibilities are met increase the bureaucracy and paperwork. Should a company endeavor to participate or host multiple trading networks, the membership management becomes very difficult.
There is, therefore, a need in the art for a system establishing a base for varied relationships and a set of processes for managing them. Comprehensive support is needed for a single trading network and to facilitate business exchange for multiple trading networks. Such a system needs to combine a sales perspective with a buying perspective to support the entire business exchange, allowing for purchase of goods from a catalog, a contract, based on supplier preference for a commodity, or by way of a request for quote; it needs to support a membership fee based on straight subscription, per transaction or including agent fees, provide for automated membership term management (dropping sub-packages which expire), ensuring coverage of other sub-packages whose initial supplier has terminated its participation, and support many combinations of services, including information technology (IT) hosting alone, or combined with application management and sourcing and procurement business process management.
It is an object of the invention to provide an improved system and method for managing relationships between suppliers and customers within a trading network.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a single trading network method and system facilitating business exchanges for multiple trading networks.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a system and method for managing a trading network so as to combine sales and buying perspectives.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a system and method for managing a trading network so as to allow purchase of goods from a catalog, contract, supplier preference or request for quote.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a system and method for managing a trading network having a membership fee based on straight subscription, per transaction or including agent fees.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a system and method for managing a trading network which provides for automated membership term management (dropping sub-packages which expire), ensuring coverage of other sub-packages whose initial supplier has terminated its participation
It is a further object of the invention to provide a system and method for managing a trading network which supports many combinations of services, including information technology (IT) hosting alone, or combined with application management and sourcing and procurement business process management.